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The Evolution of International SEO & AI Translation

November 7, 2024 Michael Holloway

As we all know, SEO is an evolving industry with constant updates across the search space. AI is now always going to be present and international SEO is no different, the second “L” in LLM stands for language after all. As businesses grow and expand into global markets, the need for effective international SEO is absolutely key to their overall success.

After all, 55.6% of content on the internet is in English, despite only 4.7% of the world being native English speakers [1], that’s a lot of people your content may not resonate with or be accessible to! Its not just a content production consideration either, 40% of people wouldn’t buy a product or use a service presented to them in a foreign language, with 76% choosing a product with a description in their language over another [1].

So, let’s explore how international SEO is changing, what impact AI and LLMs are having and how important it is to have powerful, natural translation for localised markets.

International SEO has long been underpinned by Hreflang

Introduced in 2011, hreflang has been a crucial element for successful international SEO. If you’re unfamiliar with hreflang I don’t blame you as it was an area of my training I found particularly confusing, but its actually incredibly simple to understand (not to implement, however). Hreflang is a HTML attribute which tells search engines this page in the “/uk/” domain, is this page in the “/es/” domain. Simple!

Unfortunately, implementing hreflang is a big task requiring significant amounts of URL mapping. Nowadays there are tools being developed to help streamline this process and match URLs using AI to take the bulk of the manual effort out. As a technical solution this has been great, but as search engines have become more sophisticated, the focus is shifting from technical, to quality content.

Now whilst I’m an SEO, I’m no linguist (my D in GCSE Spanish speaks volumes) but I’m lucky enough to have worked with some very bright, multilingual people. The brightest and best of which I’m collaborating with here! Enter James Brown, Head of Commercial at Comtec translations and an all-round saint.

Michael: How does evolving search impact International SEO & translation?

James: As there have been continual advancements in AI and machine learning, we’ve seen a greater focus on semantic search. This style of search means search engines are trying to understand the meaning behind the words we’re typing, as opposed to literally taking what’s written down. A key example of this is Google’s MUM algorithm which seeks to more appropriately understand the context and intent behind search queries[2].

These advancements mean search engines are becoming increasingly proficient at recognising nuance as well as high quality, naturally written content which has an impact on how we handle translation of copy.

Michael: What does this mean for translation?

James: As we continue to see advancements in language understanding across search and AI in general, what’s interesting is that human language translation is becoming an increasingly important part of international SEO for several reasons, particularly as roughly only 5% of websites have multilingual versions [3]:

  1. Improved User Experience & Closer Cultural Nuances: User experience has been a core focus for search engines from technical areas such as core web vitals, to focusing updates at making content more useful. From an EEAT perspective, a human-led approach to translation - whether that’s fully human translation or post-edited/fact-checked/localised machine translation - ensures accurate and more contextually appropriate content for users in different regions, with the target audience, cultural nuance and idioms considered as a part of content creation. This provides a huge step up over pure AI/machine-generated translation, which is often word-for-word or more on the generic side.. The result is content that resonates with the user more closely. So that’s a big tick for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness!
  2. Better Search Engine Understanding: As search engines become more adept at understanding natural language, they can better assess the quality and relevance of translated content. This means AI generated translations are more likely to be viewed as lower quality content, whilst translations produced or approved by professional human linguists will be higher quality in the eyes of search engines.
  3. Voice Search Optimisation: Voice search to me has always been something that rose but never dominated, sure my parents use it but no one else (outside controlling our office playlist). However, its still a consideration within search and natural sounding translation is key when considering conversational queries in different languages. If your content is a word-for-word shift from English to Spanish, when a Spanish speaker searches via voice, the wording may not match yours, causing you to lose out.

Of course, the above examples are one thing, but the main man in SEO John Meuller himself has said poor translation can hurt your search performance [4]. If that’s not key info, then I don’t know what is

Michael: If you’re not already convinced, then what about when translation goes wrong?

James: Improper translation can have serious negative impacts on not just a website, but a whole brand with significant financial repercussions. Some major examples are:

  1. HSBC's "Assume Nothing" Campaign: HSBC Bank had to rebrand its entire global private banking operations after its "Assume Nothing" campaign was mistranslated as "Do Nothing" in a number of countries. This cost the company $10 million in rebranding[5].
  2. KFCs Finger Lickin’ Good: When KFC opened their doors in Beijing, China, their famous “Finger Lickin’ Good” slogan was mistranslated to “Eat your fingers off”. Not exactly what head office would have had in mind initially[6].

The above examples highlight the importance of high-quality, culturally-aware translation services for international SEO, and overall business, success.

What's Next? And What Does This Mean For Us SEOs?

As we’ve discussed above, search engines and AIs are moving towards more sophisticated, semantic understanding of language. Now to me, this sounds like a good thing as high-quality copy and professional translation are set to be rewarded vs. low quality copy and fully automated translation.

However, as AIs learn to understand language to a greater degree, they will also be able to generate outputs that appear more natural than ever before. This leads to a potential rise in AI generated content polluting the SERP. Though, I’ve already touched on this before so if you want to read more on the evolution of AI search , we’ve got you covered!

As international SEO evolves, so must we. Whilst the below factors aren’t always in our control, it can be crucial to convey our views to stakeholders nonetheless:

  1. Invest in high-quality, professional language translations of your content to match improved language understanding from search engines
  2. Focus on creating culturally relevant content for each target market as search will be more able to understand these nuances
  3. Consider the impact of voice search and conversational queries in multiple languages
  4. Work closely with a dedicated translation partner who understands both the language and the cultural context of target markets and can guide you throughout the localisation process

All in all, International SEO has been evolving over the years from the primarily technical hreflang, to a more unified approach across technical and content. With language capabilities improving with each and every update to AIs and search engines, it wont be long until it is purely a content consideration.

To leave with one final conclusion which we may all know but not always adhere to, quality content is king – no matter the language its in.

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